Don't forget the number plate recognition system that can apparently be tied into CCTV cameras. Now you can be tracked going around town or along the motorways.

It seems the message has got through. The penny has finally dropped. Yes, we do live in a Police State, and the Army is part of the forces that will be used to suppress any rebellion by the population, should they feel it necessary to rise up against repression.

Anybody who knows the truth can see that we have lived in a surveillance society for some time now. This fact has been commented on many times in the media, but nobody seems to worry about the consequences of surveillance until it is too late, when we wake up and realise that we are controlled in everything we do.

A few decades ago I remember hearing the point, often quoted, that we in Britain were “free” (never, never shall be slaves), and this claim was justified by contrasting life in Britain with the lives of those in totalitarian states - the real slaves. Well, the world has changed, and we no longer live in that idealised world of popular myth. Now it is the British who are being expected to conform to the demands and controls of the State. But wasn’t it always so?

If you look back over the history of the British Isles, we have always been subject to the controls of the State, probably since the times of the Domesday Book. It is no coincidence, when George Orwell created his vision of the future in 1984, that he was writing about the society he himself knew, the Britain of the 1940s. Those who believe they are free are the most deluded, especially when they spend a lot of their time proclaiming the virtues of freedom to other people. When we have freedom is obvious, and it is visible through such laws as habeas corpus.

Don’t believe for one moment that Bush is protecting the freedom of the Iraqis by deploying thousands of US troops in their country. Conquerors always talk about the freedom they have brought through their victories.